Psalm 50 certainly starts off with a bang! God summons the whole earth, calling the heavens and earth as witnesses. Devouring fire proceeds Him, and a raging storm surrounds Him. With that presentation, we might expect Him to first address the nations that oppose Him. Instead, He calls His covenant people before Him. He speaks to people who already know His name and already participate in His worship.
 
While their sacrifices to Him are bountiful, He isn’t dependent on what His people bring to Him. Every creature is already His. He calls them to a place of thanksgiving, faithfulness to their vows, and complete dependence on Him. True worship begins with recognizing who God is and receiving our lives as gifts from His hand.
 
Then, from the center of this majestic picture, His accusation gets pretty specific. Some recite God’s commands while practically rejecting His instruction. They welcome wrongdoing and use their mouths for deceit and slander. They have mistaken God’s silence for agreement. They imagine that He shares their willingness to accommodate sin, but instead He promises to lay the case before them.

So many times people think God and His judgment can be managed through religious activity, but He can’t. We think we can hide our disobedient behavior behind the curtain of our faith community membership. But His justice reaches into our speech, wedges into our relationships, and brings light to our hidden agreements with evil. This fact calls us to examine the distance between what we confess to believe and how we live from day to day.

How do we even begin to set things right? We start with one place where we’ve resisted His correction or wounded someone with our words or deeds. We bring it honestly before God, receive His instruction, and take the next faithful step towards Him. The same God who calls His people to account also invites them to call on Him in their trouble.

Looking at your own life, where might religious familiarity be keeping you from receiving God’s correction? Is there something in your life right now, in your speech or conduct, that needs to change?

Father, only you know the true distance between my words and my ways. Expose the places where I resist Your instruction or assume Your silence means approval. Help me to learn grateful dependence, truthful and kind speech, along with faithful obedience. May my worship express a life that listens and obeys. Amen.

“One place where my conduct needs to agree with my confession is __________________.”